COMP 308(S) Everyday Life in Literature and Film
To bring the all too familiar everyday to our attention, artists and writers have made it strange. What happens when we view everyday life from elsewhere? While everyday culture has often been experienced as repressive and alienating in modern Western societies, a new importance assigned to everyday life made it liberating in Japan during the twenties and in contemporary China. The contours of the everyday are delightfully vague, and it always exceeds theorizing. For instance, is its privileged place the street or the home? Is it lived largely in institutions that regulate our daily lives, or is it lived between and outside them? Everyday objects and commodities like the potato, the postcard, the car, clothes, housing, etc., will be analyzed. Fiction by Leo Tolstoy, Franz Kafka, Georges Perec, Manil Suri, Ha Jin, and Banana Yoshimoto. Films by Chantal Akerman, Pedro Almodovar, Benoit Jaquot, and Pierre Jeunet. Art projects that transform the everyday will also be discussed, including those of Sophie Calle, Mary Kelley, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, and Christine Hill. Short theoretical excerpts from Freud, Kracauer, Goffman, Lefebvre, de Beauvoir, Friedan, Debord, Foucault, and Bourdieu. All works not originally in English will be read in English translation.
Format: seminar. Evaluation will be based on two short oral reports on everyday objects and their history, two 3- to 5-page papers, and a 10- to 12-page final paper or creative project.
Prerequisites: one 200-level literature course. Enrollment limit: 20 (expected: 10). Preference will be given to students majoring in Comparative Literature and Literary Studies.
Hour: DRUXES